TORONTO, Jan. 19 (UPI) -- Canadian scientists are using the same DNA profiling technology that helps convict human criminals to study another type of masked bandit -- the pesky raccoon.
The goal is to halt an outbreak of raccoon rabies that has been slowly moving towards Canada for decades and has now crossed the border into two provinces, said geneticist Bradley White of Trent University, in Peterborough, northeast of Toronto.
The big question, Bradley told United Press International, is how raccoons infected with rabies are getting into Canada.
In keeping with their burglarious appearance, the critters may be sneaking into the country hidden in food trucks, he said: "In Toronto, there are 20-odd cases of food trucks being opened and raccoons emerging," he said. Many of the rabid 'coons found in eastern Ontario have been found lurking near highway truck stops.
But, he added, so far there's no way to show that any of the 100 rabid animals killed in Ontario or the 60 in New Brunswick actually came from the U.S.; he's hoping that DNA evidence will help pin down their origins, just as it does in human criminal cases.
"We are using the same type of characteristic patterns (of DNA) as are used in human profiling," he said.
But, unlike human genes, raccoon genetics is "not well-known", Bradley said, so the first phase of the $530,000, four-year project is to find the so-called "DNA markers" that researchers can use to track different groups of raccoons.
Then the scientists will use those markers to analyze samples from more than 30,000 pelts taken from raccoons trapped for their fur. About 12,000 samples have already been taken, Bradley said.
At the same time, Bradley said, researchers will be analyzing the genes of the rabies virus itself, using samples taken from infected animals killed in Canada. The Centers for Disease Control, in Atlanta, is providing comparison samples from infected 'coons killed in the U.S., he said.
Raccoons, with their cute facial markings and clever paws, live very well in cities and sometimes are even fed by humans, said Dennis Slate, national wildlife rabies coordinator for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But they present a serious problem "from the public health standpoint," Slate told UPI, because they have lost their natural fear of humans.
Slate said the Canadian project is "a worthwhile scientific endeavor and could have good (wildlife) management applications."
Raccoon rabies made its first appearance in the Florida in the 1930s, and was confined to that state for years, Bradley said, until raccoon hunters moved some animals north to other states where they had been hunted out.
The outbreak reached northern New York State in the 1990s and crossed the Ontario border in 1999, he said.
Rabies costs about $300 million a year, and 40,000 people, most of them in the U.S., are treated for the disease, said Rick Rosatte, senior research scientist for the Ontario natural resources ministry and head of the ministry's rabies control group.
"The main wild reservoir (for rabies) is raccoons," Rosatte told UPI.
